At times the very thing that is deemed a blessing can become a curse when it is poorly managed.
At times the very thing that is deemed to bring you joy can end in sorrows when not kept well.
A country that flows with milk and honey, Ghana, my motherland, has been blessed with enough natural resources necessary to lift it from the clutches of poverty.
Yes indeed! The land is good, the land is rich, and it is blessed with an abundance of natural resources, including gold, which is a key one.
Ignorance, they say, is a disease. Earlier, our ancestors were unaware of the importance and usefulness of gold as a natural resource in this country.
The elites from afar came bartering this gold for mere perishables like sugar, mirrors, drinks, to mention just a few. This caused the country dearly.
As if this were not enough, the elites made slaves out of us and expatriated the able men and women to their country, inflicting hardship on them, with some losing their lives along the way.
Fast forward, ‘our eyes are opened’ transliterated in the local parlance, meaning we came to self-realization, to the great importance and usefulness of this precious mineral ‘Gold’.
Having realized what Gold can do for us as a nation, primarily boosting the economy and putting us on the map as a country with good economic stability, we as a country must guard and manage it well, from mining it to its sale in the international market.
This is not the picture we see.
The very precious mineral that should become a blessing has turned into a ‘curse’.
Greed, wickedness, take-it-all attitude, mismanagement, etc have cost us greatly in the way we handle Gold.
Out of insensitivity, greed, and wickedness, lots of people, in the name of ‘galamseyers’, are mining gold with assorted toxic chemicals, with mercury being the lead.
As if that is not enough, the rich vegetation and forestry have had their share of the greed and wickedness of these galamseyers. Our rich forestry and water bodies have been affected dearly, posing a lot of health risks to the entire nation if immediate and strategic decisions are not taken.
Having said all these, who is to blame?
Most leaders of this country have to accept a greater percentage of the blame for where we find ourselves now as a country in dealing with the menace.
These leaders have masked themselves; behind the scenes, they are working, buying this huge mining equipment, employing hungry and ready-to-work youth, dispatching them to the field to mine illegally this blessing called Gold that has indirectly turned into a ‘cure’. They sit behind and accept and enjoy the proceeds that are eventually brought to them and later mount podiums and speak against the very act they are engaged in. What a sad reality!
The country is bruised, wounded, the country weeps, and is morbidly affected by virtue of the fact that the very gold that is deemed a blessing has now become a curse.
I believe our wounds are not beyond stitches and healing, our sorrows are not beyond joy and happiness, and our despair is not beyond hope.
The time to act is NOW. Let’s not sit back unconcerned and continue to allow Gold, a blessing to the nation become a curse.
